NOTES: One Part; Key G (Various Keys). One of the most popular of all American folksongs, the raging debate started in the 1920’s about the identity of the real John Henry goes on. Here’s a few books about the investigation: "John Henry: Tracking Down A Negro Legend" by Guy B Johnson (Chapel Hill, 1929) "John Henry: A Folklore Study" by Chappell (Jena, 1933). Brett Williams: "John Henry: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1983).

Norm Cohen in 'The Long Steel Rail', p. 574-6, 1981, discusses the various theories, and says he can't be confident of the answers. “I don't know of anything on the origins of the "John Henry" ballads beyond what I wrote in Long Steel Rail, but there is a more recent bibliography for those inclined to check it out on their own: Brett Williams: "John Henry: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1983). It's easy to attach all sorts of psycho-sociological theories to the ballad--including Marxist and Freudian interpretations; but as for hard facts about the origins of the story, we'll never get any closer than Guy Johnson and Louis Chappel did in the 1920s when they tried to interview anyone who claimed to remember anything about the building of the Big Bend (actually "Great Bend") tunnel to which the legend was most frequently attached. Which was not very close.”

While the identity of John Henry may never be conclusively proven, there are many interesting theories, based on fact, that are worth considering. Here are two theories:

WEST VIRGINIA ORIGIN: Lomax credits Chappell with the tracking of the major folk hero's roots. "He (Chappell) pinpointed the scene of the ballad to the Big Bend Tunnel on the C & O, R.R. in the West Virgina Mountains about 1870. 1 1/4 mile long, the Big Bend was the biggest tunnel job attempted by man up to that date". Lomax believes that John Henry is a descendent of Old John the trickster slave and that the origins of the song springs from the old Hammer song and Lass Of Roch Royal.

From the William & Mary News, (1998) came this article- History Professor Locates Gravesite Of Folk Hero; Postcard yields clues about John Henry's final days. Whitewashed barracks, train tracks and sand pictured in this 1912 postcard of the Virginia State Penitentiary led Scott Nelson to identify folk hero John Henry as a convict laborer who died while working on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad line in the 1870s and was buried on the grounds of the penitentiary. After the Civil War, thousands of African-American men performed the back-breaking work of tunneling through mountains, connecting the American South to the West. Many workers lost their lives in tunnel cave-ins, dynamite explosions and drilling accidents. Others died from easily preventable diseases such as scurvy, consumption and dysentery. Folklorists long ago concluded that John Henry was a real person who worked as a "hammer man," digging his way through railway tunnels of the South. The lyrics in the ballad date his death to the early 1870s, while he worked on the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia. This passage through the Allegheny Mountains was built between 1870 and 1873. The ballad describes a competition between John Henry and the modern steam drill, which was introduced to the South in 1870. The African-American folk hero won the contest but died in the process. Like many hammer men, John Henry was literally worked to death.

While most folklorists have believed that John Henry was a paid laborer, Nelson knew from his previous research into Southern railroad history that most railroad workers on the C&O line in the 1870s were convicts. "Most accounts of John Henry claim he was a high-priced railroad worker," Nelson said. "This seems unlikely, however, given that the Chesapeake & Ohio had a near-monopoly on Virginia's convicts in 1871 and 1872." For decades, the final stanza of "John Henry" has stumped historians: "They took John Henry to the white house and they buried him in the sand/Now every locomotive that come roarin' by says there lies a steel-driving man."

"Folklorists have not known what to make of this passage," Nelson said, "and have wondered how John Henry's body might have ended up at the Oval Office, where there is no railroad and no sand." Digging deeper, he learned that convict workers on the C&O were buried on the grounds of the Virginia State Penitentiary until 1877, when Richmond city officials ordered more suitable burials off-site.

"The Virginia State Penitentiary had a red house for administration and a white house as a barracks and workshop," Nelson said. "Sand borders the perimeter. Nearby were the tracks of the Richmond & Petersburg and the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac railroads."

While the prison was being torn down when the land was sold to the Ethyl Corp. in the early 1990s, construction workers, digging behind where the white house had been located, discovered scores of bodies, buried together in large boxes. Galvanized rubber jewelry found on the skeletons helped archaeologists to date the site to the second half of the 19th century. The remains were transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where they are being studied.

ALABAMA ORIGIN: John Garth: In my opinion, the data gathered by Guy Johnson and Louis Chappell, and published in their books of 1929 and 1933, respectively, make it very unlikely that John Henry raced a steam drill at Big Bend Tunnel. These men made a massive effort, focused on Big Bend, and failed to find anything definitive, despite the fact that they were able to interview about a dozen men who had worked on the construction of that tunnel. Only one of these men claimed to have seen the race and his testimony was very weak. Others testified that it could not have happened at Big Bend - they would have known about it if it had.

Johnson received letters from C. C. Spencer, F. P. Barker, and Glendora Cannon Cummings, all of whom placed John Henry and his race with a steam drill in Alabama during the 1880s. Cummings stated that John Henry beat the steam drill and died at Oak Mountain in 1887, an event that her uncle witnessed. Barker said that John Henry was at "Cursey Mountain" while he, Barker, was driving steel on Red Mountain (which lies along the southeastern edge of Birmingham, Alabama).

Spencer's letter was especially rich in detail, but Johnson was frustrated by the failures of his attempts to verify some of Spencer's facts. Spencer mentioned "Cruzee" Mountain, similar to Barker's "Cursey," which Johnson could never find, in Alabama or anywhere else. Spencer also named the railroad under construction as the Alabama Great Southern, which exists but does not go over or through a mountain with a name similar to "Cruzee" or "Cursey." These failures caused Johnson to abandon Alabama, in favor of Big Bend, in his unsuccessful pursuit of John Henry.

Spencer said that he personally witnessed John Henry's death. He described how John Henry fell into a faint near the end of the all-day contest on September 20, regained consciousness, said that he was blind and dying, and asked that his wife be summoned. His wife came and cradled his head in her lap. He asked, "Have I beat that old steam drill?" Measurements gave John Henry 27 1/2 feet and the steam drill 21.

Further, he said that John Henry was an ex-slave from Holly Springs, Mississippi; that he took his former master's surname, Dabner; and that he was working for contractors Shea and Dabner when he died. Cummings gave the contractors' names as Shay and Dabney, and a "Jamaica" informant, C. S. Farquharson, gave them as Shea and Dabner.

In fact, Captain Frederick Yeamans Dabney was Chief Engineer for the Columbus & Western Railway Company during the construction of their line between Goodwater, Alabama, and Birmingham in 1887-88. He was a Rensellear-educated civil engineer who made a career of railroad design and construction. Captain was his Confederate army rank. He was born in Virginia in 1834/35; raised in Raymond, Mississippi, from about age one; and settled his family in nearby Crystal Springs, Mississippi, after the Civil War.

Between Raymond and Crystal Springs lay Burleigh Plantation, which was owned by Captain Dabney's uncle, Thomas Smith Gregory Dabney. In 1860 T. S. G. Dabney owned 154 slaves, while Philip Augustine Lee Dabney, Captain Dabney's father, owned eight. (Note: Since the publication of the article I have learned that one of P. A. L. Dabney's slaves was Henry, born in 1844. If this is John Henry, he would have been 43 years old in 1887. I'm told that this is a reasonable age for a champion steel driver. - JG)

About 15 miles east of Birmingham the C & W line (later Central of Georgia and now Norfolk Southern) passes through Coosa and Oak Mountain Tunnels, which are two miles apart, portal to portal. Obviously, "Coosa" was intended by "Cruzee" and "Cursey" in Spencer's and Barker's letters. "Coosa" is locally pronounced "Koo'see" and is even spelled that way in some old documents.

The discoveries that Coosa and Oak Tunnels exist, that they have railroad tunnels through them, that these were built in 1887-88, that a Dabney was the engineer in charge of construction, that he was from Mississippi, and that his family owned slaves near Crystal Springs lend credence to the testimonies of Spencer, Barker, and Cummings. Evidently Spencer simply got his Mississippi "Springs" towns confused when he mentioned Holly Springs, which, being near Memphis, is not very close to Crystal Springs, south of Jackson.

In addition, there is a strong local tradition among Central of Georgia employees and around Leeds, Alabama, that John Henry raced a steam drill and died just outside the east portal of Oak Mountain Tunnel, between Oak and Coosa Mountain Tunnels. This tradition is as old and strong as that for Big Bend.

Finally, in about a dozen versions of "John Henry," there are lines that are more consistent with the Alabama location than with "Big Bend Tunnel on the C & O Road." At least two pre-1930 versions of "John Henry" place him on "the Georgia line" or "the Central o' Georgia Rail Road."

Thus, the evidence favors a site near Oak and Coosa Mountains, Alabama, and 1887 as the place and time of John Henry's race with a steam drill.

FINAL NOTES: The similarities between the names John Henry and John Hardy have caused some confusion. Cox has versions with intermixed lyrics and John Hardy version 11 in this collection was mistakenly named “John Henry.”